League Of Legends Honor System Goes Live

Today Riot Games implemented the Honor System for their MOBA League of Legends. The Honor System is designed to recognize players who act respectfully in the game.

At the end of a match, you'll now see a "thumbs up" button. Clicking that allows you to dole out Honor to other players. You can Honor teammates for being helpful, good teammates, or just plain friendly. You can even bestow Honor upon an opponent for being sportsmanlike. This Honor will then be displayed by category on their summoner profile.

Currently there's no actual material gain from gaining Honor. You can't cash it in for extra Champions or something. However, Riot says that they plan to experiment with possible rewards for the most Honorable players.

For now, Riot is trying to make sure that Honor is doled out fairly. You have a finite amount of Honor to give out, so you can't just indiscriminately hand it out to every player you encounter. In order to replenish your supply, you have to play more matches. The highest Honor gains will be from players who have never Honored you before, so as to prevent friends from simply dumping Honor on each other. If you see players trading Honor, you can report them. A player's Honor will be reset to zero if the Tribunal (the player-run displinary system) determines they've been trading Honor or otherwise acting inappropriately.

Riot describes the Honor System as a "positive feedback initiative." They hope that it will encourage courteous behavior among players. We'll see if it works while there's no actual reward in place. Maybe the promise of a future reward will be enough to make players conduct themselves like ladies and gentlemen?